Holland leads the way
Road safety is always a topic. And it even goes controversial. An innovative development by a Dutch company has been discussed for almost two years.
There, in the municipality of Bodegraven-Reeuwijk, which lies on the Dutch A12 (the extension of the German A3) midway between Utrecht and The Hague, i.e. a melting pot of traffic infrastructure, so-called Lichtlijns were installed in the ground at pedestrian crossings as a test setup, approx. one metre wide red and green LED strips that light up analogously to traffic light signals.
The fact that this test setup has been completed and no traces of it can even be found on the website of the inventor or the municipality is of course not due to the fact that there is no traffic in this small, equally idyllic and modern place that could be adapted to large cities with trams, which have more difficulties than cars with inattentive pedestrians who look at their smartphones instead of the traffic they are participating in.
The cost-benefit factor
Rather, it is the cost that is deterring policymakers worldwide. In aviation, one human life is worth US$1.25 million. In the case of crashes or other accidents involving commercial aircraft, it is compared with how much it costs to rectify the technical fault. So if 100 people have died as a result, something is only done if the investment to prevent future incidents for the same reason is less than $125 million. Traffic fatalities in Germany have declined steadily over the past 50 solstices and have stagnated in recent years. And that, of course, is precisely no reason to think about changing lifestyles, that pedestrians don't want to go for a walk but want to be online while on the road; after all, only grey-haired people sit in the forums and state parliaments who consider the smartphone as well as the CD to be fads that will soon be a thing of the past - at least as far as the CD is concerned, the oldies are already right.
The discussion today
The conference of transport ministers revealed how important the people are to the politicians. The creation of car-friendly inner cities was the focus of the discussion. While the CDU/CSU-led states want to strictly separate pedestrians from motor traffic in so-called wildlife parks, the Greens do not think the installation of LED strips at zebra crossings goes far enough. After all, most accidents involving smartphone pedestrians do not happen at crossings, but along unorthodox routes. Therefore, they advocate integrating these light signals along every separate footpath-roadway area where there are no crash barriers preventing road crossing and using sensors to detect whether a car is approaching. In Germany, this is not even 20,000 km. A member of a former party starting with S interjected that this could be combined with the G5 antennas for fast internet in passenger cars, whereupon he was expelled from the hall.
It remains to be hoped that the short-lived example from the Netherlands will come up again in a later generation. From 2023, new registrations for combustion engines will be restricted in the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden and banned from 2025 to 2030. Germany is hoping for a miraculous climate cure and wants to pass a law after the next elections that instead of 2050 will then set 2090 as the new target for the gradual restriction of initially diesel and later possibly also petrol and paraffin vehicles. After all, a survey requested by the Transport Committee found that 90% of today's pedestrians do not know they are on a road when they look at their mobile phone; another 30% said they do not trust statistics that are not on their 3D touchscreen and would download a free app to show them they are not alone on the road.